Here’s All You Need To Know About Digital India Initiative

How was it waking up to see everyone on FB changing their DP to tricolor to support Digital India Campaign? Colorful, ain’t it? But merely making you Facebook wall colorful is not going to help the digital India Initiative. Here are the key things you need to know.

What is Digital India Initiative?

It’s a niche Initiative launched by our Prime Minister Shri. Narendra Modi on July 1st 2015, with an agenda to give everyone the Power of Internet and transform India into a digitally driven society.

It emphasizes on getting every place in India Internet enabled which will open up tonnes of opportunities, empower E-governance, employment and ease of doing business across the globe from any remote corner.

There are many major projects undertaken by the Government under this initiative like,

Manufacturing of Electronics- Govt. is focusing on zero import of electronics, which is a huge step towards technology revolution.

Public Internet Access- Govt. is aiming to provide internet to 2.5 lakh villages by March 2017 and give them multi service centres by providing 1.5 lakh Post offices.

Internet Enabled Highways– Free internet across all national highways by laying optical fibers.

Mobile Connectivity– All villages will have mobile connectivity by 2018

E-Governance– Improving process and delivery through E-Governance; how cool is it to get voters ID, school certificates online? Also it’ll facilitate reporting issues and talk to the Govt. perhaps. Now let me tell you how it can help me and you,

This opens up a tonnes of opportunities and jobs even as the whole infrastructure is setup. The villages will have a window to the world where they can apply for jobs, sell directly to customers eliminating middlemen. Every business we speak now is shifting to online so this will help people from rural places come and showcase their products online.

The thought of free WiFi across National highways itself is so comforting.

Millions of students across India will now be able to quench their Inquisitive hunger; learning will be so much fun in Govt. Schools and villages. Also now both students and teachers in rural places can be up to date with latest upcoming.

No more long queues for voters Id, Aadhar cards and other Govt. ID’s

It’s not a common thing that someone can interact with the Govt. or Prime Minister using digital means, never has it happened in India at least, E-Governance is a step towards transparent and efficient Govt., it makes reporting issues to Govt. very easy. Like the Govt. says Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsive and Transparent’ (SMART) governance.

More than half the population of India lives in villages. By getting them online it’s a huge game for other players to now make them a potential customer, 120 Crore Indians is a worthy deal (no wonder Google, Microsoft and others are in the race)

Now for all the folks who thought making your DPs colorful will support Internt.Org, I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work that way and no one can make you vote without prompting or asking to you to agree for it. However Facbook or Mark doesn’t need mine or your permission to start or implement Internet.org. It does not need anyone’s votes for kicking it off.

Internet.org is similar to Digital India campaign but in a global scale, however it comes with a few terms and conditions, viz Facebook will provide free basic internet to millions of people, but like i mentioned Basic. Facebook will decide what you need or what a certain geography needs, like your social networking will only be Facebook, search will only be Google, maybe E-commerce will only be Ebay ( I’m just guessing ). Now this restricts people from accessing everything they want on the internet. What if Twitter did this? There would be no Facebook.

Now Facebook is investing Millions and Billions of Dollars in it, so they have to create such partnerships, however this not fair for Net Neutrality but still a fair business model. How much ever we dislike this, it is still going to be implemented keeping in mind millions of people who do not have access to Internet.

On a lighter note, I feel sorry for Ankit Fadia being the Brand Ambassador for the Digital India Initiative 😉

Raghavendra is a Bangalore Based Entrepreneur and a Startup Specialist, has helped many companies establish in India. Co- Founder of AppDra Software Solutions and GharBook.com, a million dollar funded company and also listed as top 8 start up in the country by NASSCOM